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{{orthodoxyinjapan}}
The '''Tokyo Orthodox Seminary''' was established in 1880 1879 by [[Archimandrite ]] Nicholas, the future St. [[Nicholas of Japan]], on the Tokyo site of the headquarters for his Orthodox Christian mission to the Japanese. The headquarters were located on the property that he purchased in September 1872 in the Surugadai Kanda section of Tokyo. Today, this is also the site of the principal Cathedral of the Church of Japan, the [[Holy Resurrection Cathedral (Tokyo, Japan)|Holy Resurrection Cathedral]], better know as Nicolai-do, and the administrative offices of the Church. The [[seminary]] has educated Japanese since its founding and has provided an education for the Japanese [[clergy]] continuously except for the World War II years and its immediate aftermath.
==Early years==
When Archimandrite Nicholas moved the center of his mission from Hakodate to Tokyo in 1872, his initial efforts were to establish a school for [[catechist]]s and the Russian language as he had recognized the need to establish a 'native' base for evangelizing Orthodox Christianity. His early converts, [[Paul Sawabe]], John Sakai, and others had been very successful in reaching out to the Japanese population. As money was raised, this move was followed a year later by a new building to support the schools. Additionally he started a school for women. After teaching music himself for two years, Nicholas began looking for a professor of Church Music. Hieromonk [[Anatoly Tikhai]], who had succeeded to Nicholas' Hakodate position, recommended his brother [[Yakov Tikhai]] who was graduating from a seminary [[Chişinău Theological Seminary]] in MoldaviaKishinev, Moldava. Jakov Yakov accepted the position and arrived in Japan in late 1874 and quickly began learning the Japanese language.
Nicholas established the seminary in 1880 by combining the mission schools and the language school.
In time the Theological Seminary became the center of Orthodox Christian religious education in Japan as other institutions were added to the language, catechists, and women's schools. These included adding a women's college, an orphanage, an [[iconography ]] studio, and choral schools, as well as a printing facility.
The system of teaching as developed by Bp. Nicholas relied upon former graduates to teach the lower classes while Bp. Nicholas or various visiting clergy would teach the upper classes. Gradually Japanese teachers and professors replaced the Russian faculty and more and more of the class work was done in Japanese. By 1912, the Japanese language had replaced Russian as the language of instruction in the seminary.
The course of study at the seminary was a challenging set of subjects that provided the Japanese students a valuable introduction to Christian and Western subjects. It was an epochal education program as Japan entered the Meiji Era. Many of the alumni of the seminary were to serve with distinction in the religious, literary, academic, and political worlds of Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the education of the students with a combination of Western and Japanese knowledge gave them an advantage in the new world that Japan had entered. The seven year program included a myriad of subjects including in addition to the religious subjects of Church history, Holy Scriptures, liturgical theology, doctrine, [[Old Testament|Old]] and [[New Testament]], Dogmatic Theology, Patristics, ethics, canon law, and the Christian West, the subjects of European history, philosophy, logic, psychology, languages including classic Japanese, Russian and Greek, and Church music.
After a comprehensive course of studies, a number of graduates of the Tokyo Seminary advanced on to studies at Russian academies including the [[KievTheological Academy|Kiev]], [[Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary|Moscow]], and [[St. Petersburg Theological Academy|St. Petersburg ]] Academies. While most of these men did not become Orthodox [[priest]]s, they served the Japanese mission in various capacities as [[lay]]men, including as instructors at the Tokyo Seminary.
In 1897, a three story building was erected for the seminary.
